Xaq Fixx's shared items in Google Reader

Bodyweight workouts

2009-11-11T01:35:55Z

When I looked a year ago or so for a site that offered regular bodyweight workouts, including instructions on how to do everything, I didn't find anything good. But now there is BodyFitBurn. Check out their intro manual, a very informative PDF, or their thrice-weekly exercise circuits.

DIY Southern Comfort Cold and Flu Elixir [Home Remedies]

2009-11-10T19:00:00Z

The standard for cold relief is "liquid green death"—or, rather, NyQuil. If you don't feel like sitting in a coma for the better half of the day (or just hate NyQuil), try food weblog Hot Knives' at-home flu remedy elixir.

Making this soothing concoction—with ingredients including mint, agave nectar, ginger, lemon, olive oil, chile, and yes, Southern Comfort—is a simple process of tossing ingredients in a blender and pouring yourself a dose. So what's the thought process behind the blend?

In place of Acetaminophen (pain and fever reliever), Dextromethorphan HBr (cough suppressant), and Doxylamine succinate (sleep aid) we used green chile, ginger, citric acid and booze — all herbal, if subtler, forms of the chemical stuff. A couple shots, errr, doses, of the stuff is perfect for sitting on the couch in a sweatshirt and sweating out your germs.

Finding something that tastes even remotely better than your over-the-counter cough and flu medication is worth a go in our book, although we'll take this time to note: We're not doctors, so take the magical flu-healing powers with a grain of salt.

Are you comfortable relying on home-brew remedies like this one? Do you have your own? Sound off in the comments.

All Natural NyQuil [Hot Knives via Readymade]

Intel Reader reads books to the lazy and infirm (video)

2009-11-10T14:59:00Z

While we're busying ourselves with arguing about how to replace the perfectly usable book gadget, Intel is right to point out that plenty of people, for whatever reason, can't read at all. Presenting its Reader as a necessity rather than luxury, Intel has shown off its vision for how visually impaired and dyslexic people can obtain access to the written word. Combining a text-scanning camera with a text-to-speech engine (powered by an Atom inside) is certainly no bad idea, but as the video beyond the break will show you, Intel's execution isn't exactly stellar. The arrhythmic, robotic reading from Alice In Wonderland left us shaken, but what floored us was the $1,499 asking price. Yes, it's a customized niche device, but we reckon we could build something similar for a third of the price. Full PR and video after the break.

Continue reading Intel Reader reads books to the lazy and infirm (video)

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Handhelds

Intel Reader reads books to the lazy and infirm (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

2009-11-10T20:32:35Z

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

Pfizer Corporation Plans to Abandon New London Headquarters that Led to the Kelo Takings

2009-11-10T02:20:08Z

The Pfizer Corporation has announced that it will close down its headquarters in New London, Connecticut. [HT: my former student Josh Blackman, and other VC readers]. As our regular readers may recall, Pfizer played a key role in instigating the notorious condemnations that led to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the taking of private property for “economic development” in Kelo v. City of New London. Pfizer lobbied state and local governments to undertake the condemnation so that the land could be transferred to developers who would build facilities that were expected be useful to the firm and its employees. The head of the New London Development Corporation — the quasi-governmental agency that ordered the takings — had close ties to Pfizer and was married to a Pfizer executive.

The Kelo condemnations inflicted great harm on the people who lost their homes and businesses and led to the expenditure of some $80 million in public funds. To date, however, nothing has been built on the site, and there is no prospect that anything will be in the foreseeable future. Pfizer’s decision to leave New London makes it even less likely that anything productive will be done with the condemned land anytime soon. So far, the main beneficiaries of the Kelo takings seem to be the feral cats who have settled in the area. Far from producing the “economic development,” the Kelo condemnations have actually damaged the local economy by destroying taxpaying homes and businesses and expending large amounts of public money for no return.

For reasons I discuss in much greater detail in this article, this outcome should not be surprising. State and local governments that undertake “economic development” condemnations have strong incentives to approve takings that are expected to benefit well-connected interest groups even if they destroy more development than they create.

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Chicago Court Throwing Out LIDAR Speeding Tickets

2009-11-10T18:18:00Z

bridgeco writes "Chicago Traffic Court Judges have been throwing out speeding cases in which the driver's speed was measured with a LIDAR. Judges are asking for a special 'Frye Hearing' to determine the accuracy of these devices. Many motorists nabbed for speeding by a laser gun, instead of radar, are seeing their tickets thrown out at Chicago's traffic court because of a legal issue that the city's law department has been unable to overcome. Within the past year judges in Cook County Traffic Court in Chicago determined that speeds captured by lidar were not admissible because the devices had not been proven scientifically reliable in an Illinois court, said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the law department, which prosecutes most speeding tickets in the city." (Here's some background on LIDAR from Wikipedia.)

Voice Controlled LED sign

2009-11-09T21:00:00Z

Humberto writes in to point us at this handy use of the Google Voice transcription feature. In his Voice2LED Project, Josh converted a simple LED sign into a voice-activated one by connecting it up to his phone number. It turns out that when you leave a message on a Google Voice voice-mail account, it is automatically transcribed into text and sent to your email. To take advantage of this, Josh built a program that looks for messages that start with a particular phrase, and then displays the rest of the text on the screen. He built the sign using instructions from nerdkits, and his source code is listed on his site.

This looks like a fun way to leave messages or notifications to the people that you live with.

In the Maker Shed:

Peggy 2 Kit

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Brine Your Thanksgiving Turkey for Juicier Results [Food]

2009-11-09T23:30:00Z

Thanksgiving's just around the corner, which means many of us will try our hand at cooking a turkey in hopes we don't dry it out. It only takes a little know-how in combination with some science to produce the juiciest results possible.

For those new to brining, the basic idea behind the process is that by soaking a meat that is low in fat (turkey, pork, chicken) in a mixture of salt and water, you're increasing your meat's ability to retain its moisture. Over at food weblog Serious Eats, they've put together the ultimate guide to brining your turkey to score the best and juiciest results for your Thanksgiving feast. The post does side-by-side testing of turkey breasts soaked in brine, regular water, and one not treated at all. As expected, the brined turkey loses the least of its weight when cooked and turns out juiciest.

If you're a science nerd like us, you'll appreciate the Alton Brown approach to brining this post takes, and your table is sure to benefit from it. If you swear by brining, let's hear your best tips in the comments.

The Food Lab: Turkey Brining Basics [Serious Eats]

The Class Struggle Over Beer Strength

2009-11-09T22:57:00Z

USA Today notes a trend toward the loosening of state limits on the alcoholic content of beer. Although 20 states still dictate beer strength, it reports, "Alabama and West Virginia have passed laws increasing the legal alcohol-by-volume cap for beer from 6% to as high as 13.9% this year," and "similar efforts are underway in Iowa and Mississippi, two states with very restrictive limits on the sale of high-alcohol beer." To his credit, Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, passes up an opportunity to complain. "Our chief concern," he says, "is that [higher-alcohol brews] be properly labeled so people understand it takes fewer beers to become intoxicated."

Ironically, until a 1995 Supreme Court decision overturned the rule on First Amendment grounds, federal law prohibited brewers from listing alcohol content on beer labels, based on the fear that such information would encourage excessive drinking. The concern, dating back to the repeal of Prohibition, was that brewers would compete for the business of Joe Six-Pack by promising the most bang for his buck. Even after the ban was lifted, such "strength wars" never materialized (with the arguable exception of the malt liquor subcategory). Indeed, by far the preferred style of beer in the U.S. is a watery, pilseneresque lager that is almost as weak in alcoholic punch as it is in flavor. The impetus for raising state ceilings on alcohol content comes not from companies selling cheap intoxicants for the masses but from craft brewers offering such potent, tasty, and relatively expensive styles as double IPAs, Belgian ales, Russian imperial stouts, and barley wines. The buyers of these products are not the working-class drunks that so worried post-Prohibition legislators. In terms of education and income, they look more like wine drinkers, who always have been permitted to know the strength of their preferred beverage.

[Thanks to Doug Greene for the tip.]

Massive wort cooler

2009-11-10T00:00:00Z

In brewing, wort is "the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars that will be fermented by the brewing yeast to produce alcohol" [Wikipedia]. At a certain point in the brewing process, you need to cool down your wort. This ambitious homebrewmaster made a huge cooler (96 ft of tubing) for his 22 gallon brewpot. [via Zedomax]

Massive DIY wort cooler 96ft long

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Brazilian Blackout Traced to Sooty Insulators, Not Hackers

2009-11-10T16:33:16Z

Shared by Xaq Fixx
Oops. It were bad wiring not hackers.

SAO PAULO, Brazil — A massive 2007 electrical blackout in Brazil has been newly blamed on computer hackers, but was actually the result of a utility company’s negligent maintenance of high voltage insulators on two transmission lines. That’s according to reports from government regulators and others who investigated the incident for more than a year.

In a broadcast Sunday night, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes cited unnamed sources in making the extraordinary claim that a two-day outage in the Atlantic state of Espirito Santo was triggered by hackers targeting a utility company’s control systems. The blackout affected 3 million people. Hackers also caused another, smaller blackout north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, the network claimed.

Brazilian government officials disputed the report over the weekend, and Raphael Mandarino Jr., director of the Homeland Security Information and Communication Directorate, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that he’s investigated the claims and found no evidence of hacker attacks, adding that Brazil’s electric control systems are not directly connected to the internet.

The utility company involved, Furnas Centrais Elétricas, told Threat Level on Monday, it “has no knowledge of hackers acting in Furnas’ power transmission system.”

A review of official reports from the utility, the country’s independent systems operator group and its energy regulatory agency turns up nothing to support the hacking claim.

The earliest explanation for the blackout came from Furnas two days after the Sept. 26, 2007, incident began. The company announced that the outage was caused by deposits of dust and soot from burning fields in the Campos region of Espirito Santo. “The concentration of these residues would have been exacerbated by the lack of rain in the region for eight months,” the company said.

Brazil’s independent systems operator group later confirmed that the failure of a 345-kilovolt line “was provoked by pollution in the chain of insulators due to deposits of soot” (.pdf). And the National Agency for Electric Energy, Brazil’s energy regulatory agency, concluded its own investigation in January 2009 and fined Furnas $3.27 million (.pdf) for failing to maintain the high-voltage insulators on its transmission towers.

Cascading electrical failures like the one in Espirito Santo often have a number of contributing factors, and it’s possible that the poorly maintained insulators were only the most conspicuous element in the 2007 incident.

Reports that hackers triggered at least one blackout outside the United States first got wide attention last year, based on comments made by the CIA’s chief cybersecurity officer, Tom Donahue. He declined, however, to identify any country or the specifics of the alleged attacks. The blackout claim even made it into a speech given by President Obama in May. “In other countries cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness,” Obama said, not mentioning the cities. In an interview with Threat Level last month, former cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke named Brazil as a hack-attack blackout victim, but didn’t provide verifiable details.

In some versions of the story, the hackers were trying to extort money from the utility. The 60 Minutes broadcast this week — which cited six unnamed sources in the intelligence, military and cybersecurity communities — was the first to peg the story to specific blackouts. CBS did not repeat the extortion claim, reporting instead that the location and motives of the hackers are a mystery.

Fallout from the story kept telephones ringing in Brazil’s electricity sector Monday. “Everyone’s been calling us all day about it,” said a beleaguered spokesman with the National Operator of the Electric System.

Top image: Sao Paolo endures a power outage in 1999.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP

See Also:

Cocktailnerd's Bumblebee

2009-11-10T16:32:23Z

Shared by Xaq Fixx
@Garland, if you want one, let me know, we have the stuff.

It's been one of those crazy weekends, and tonight I plan on unwinding with this deliciousness. It's a Bumblebee, and I have Cocktailnerd to thank.

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Peter & Max: the Fables comics jump to novel

2009-11-10T15:45:07Z

Shared by Xaq Fixx
If you haven't read any of the Fables series and consider yourself a fan of graphic novels or comics you are really missing out

The Fables comics are an infinitely entertaining and moving series of comics about a world in which every fable, legend and belief of humanity has been chased from the worlds of fantasy to exile on Earth, hiding in a secret side-street in Manhattan. The chaser is The Adversary, an evil emperor, and his numberless goblin shock-troops. This is such rich material, as it allows for tellings and retellings of every beloved story of humanity.

In Peter & Max: A Fables Novel, writer Bill Willingham tells a key piece of the story in prose form, and proves that he's every bit as wonderful a prose-writer as he is a comics-writer. Peter and Max is the story of two brothers, Peter (Piper, also Pumpkin Eater) and Max (the Pied Piper), who grow estranged from one another on the eve of the Adversary's invasion of their homeworld, and lose themselves in a blood-soaked Black Forest, where they are both fired by the crucible of war and magic into men whose innocence will never be recovered.

Max is the villain here, jealous of Peter's inheritance of Frost, the magic flute of their father. Max acquires Fire, another powerful magic flute, from Frau Totenkinder, the evil witch of the Black Forest, and he and Fire warp each other into something monstrous.

Peter, meanwhile, is orphaned in Hamelin, where he becomes an accomplished thief, escaping from the worst circumstances with the help of Frost, and forever pining for his lost love, Bo Peep, disappeared into the evil woods.

The action moves from this mythic backstory to a contemporary tale in which Max has come at last to contemporary Fabletown, and Peter must hunt him, even though it means his certain doom.

As with the Fables comics, Willingham manages to merge the gentle, meandering feel of fairy tales with a breakneck, contemporary pacing -- a very clever trick indeed. The characters and stories are very engaging, the tension real, the mythos powerful. There's everything to like about Peter & Max, even if you've never cracked a Fables comic (though you probably will, once you've finished reading the book).

Peter & Max: A Fables Novel

Previously:

Replacing $100K diagnostic chip fab with Shrinky-Dinks and a laser-printer

2009-11-09T06:09:59Z

CCrawford sez, "Michelle Khine couldn't afford the $100,000 fabrication gear to make micro-fluidic chips needed for chip-based diagnostic tests. She turned to Shrinky-Dinks and found a new way to solve the problem."

To test her idea, she whipped up a channel design in AutoCAD, printed it out on Shrinky Dink material using a laser printer, and stuck the result in a toaster oven. As the plastic shrank, the ink particles on its surface clumped together, forming tiny ridges. That was exactly the effect Khine wanted. When she poured a flexible polymer known as PDMS onto the surface of the cooled Shrinky Dink, the ink ridges created tiny channels in the surface of the polymer as it hardened. She pulled the PDMS away from the Shrinky Dink mold, and voilà: a finished microfluidic device that cost less than a fast-food meal.
Khine began using the chips in her experiments, but she didn't view her toaster-oven hack as a breakthrough right away. "I thought it would be something to hold me over until we got the proper equipment in place," she says. But when she published a short paper about her technique, she was floored by the response she got from scientists all over the world. "I had no idea people were going to be so interested," Khine says.

A children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips (Thanks, CCrawford!)

(Image: Dave Lauridsen)

How the ambient sound at Walt Disney World works

2009-11-09T05:52:57Z

Noah sez, "An interview with the man who designed the ambient sound at Disney World, ensuring a constant experience rather than one that ends with the end of the ride. It was initially a little uneven, with sound changing volumes depending on where you stood, so they used algorithms to position 15,000 speakers around the park so that the levels would never change."

I like the way there's often running water or waterfalls between different soundscapes to act as a white-noise buffer. It's subtle but incredibly effective. You almost never hear two contrasting soundscapes at once.

In the mid 1990's, the park started researching the problem. It would eventually find no existing solution, so the engineers had to design and construct, on their own, one of the most complex and advanced audio systems ever built. The work paid off: today, as you walk through Disney World, the volume of the ambient music does not change. Ever. More than 15,000 speakers have been positioned using complex algorithms to ensure that the sound plays within a range of just a couple decibels throughout the entire park. It is quite a technical feat acoustically, electrically, and mathematically.
As we land, I ask Mr Q what he considers the highlight of his career. He describes how he wrote some software for "manufacturing emotion" with the thousands of new speakers in the park. The system he built can slowly change the style of the music across a distance without the visitor noticing. As a person walks from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland, for example, each of the hundreds of speakers slowly fades in different melodies at different frequencies so that at any point you can stop and enjoy a fully accurate piece of music, but by the time you walk 400 feet, the entire song has changed and no one has noticed.

How Mr. Q Manufactured Emotion (Thanks, Noah!)

Dell Mini 9 modded into motion sensitive, touchscreen tablet (video)

2009-11-10T06:33:00Z

True, this ain't the first Dell Mini tablet hack we've laid eyes on -- but what we do have here is a pretty sweet mod by MyDellMini forum member "rock99rock" (must be his confirmation name). In addition to replacing his Dell Mini 9 display with a touchscreen kit, our man re-jiggered an ActionXL motion sensing controller to allow the screen to rotate as you rotate the device. Not bad, eh? Hit that read link for some real radical instrucciones -- but not before checking out the enthralling video after the break.

[Via Liliputing]

Continue reading Dell Mini 9 modded into motion sensitive, touchscreen tablet (video)

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Dell Mini 9 modded into motion sensitive, touchscreen tablet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the Maker Shed: Electronic Brick starter kit

2009-11-10T09:00:00Z

The Electronic Brick Starter kit allows you to easily connect various digital, analog, and I2C/Uart modules to any shield-compatible Arduino. The kit comes with 10 modules, and the sensor chassis. You can start building projects without the need to solder or breadboard. Just plug, program, and play!

Electronic Brick starter kit includes:

(1) Arduino sensor chassis
(1) LCD 16*2 Characters
(1) Rotary Angle Sensor (Analog)
(1) Button Switch
(1) Piezo buzzer
(1) Tilt Switch
(2) LEDs
(1) Light Sensor
(1) Temperature Sensor
(1) 2-pin Plugable terminal module
(5) Fully-buckled 3 Wire Cables
(1) 10-pin Colorful Ribbon Cable (for connecting the LCD)

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Art Lebedev's Rozetkus 3D vs. Letout Outlet... Fight! (updated)

2009-11-10T12:01:00Z

Just yesterday the internets were buzzing with the latest design from Art Lebedev: the Rozetkus 3D; a standard outlet that pops out of the wall with a simple push to support multiple connections. Lebedev, you'll recall, made quite a name for himself by taking the Optimus Maximus programmable OLED keyboard from art to part, so to speak. Since posting about the Rozetkus 3D we've been informed of another very similar design concept called the Letout Outlet. So similar, in fact, that it would appear that we've got a copycat on our hands. Unfortunately for our friends at Lebedev, designer Damjan Stankovic created his Letout Outlet concept in January of 2009 and was recognized with a prestigious reddot design award in the "domestic aid" category back in August. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and good artists copy while great artists steal, well, then congratulations to one and all. Unfortunately, only Damjan Stankovic will be on stage during the formal reddot awards ceremony on November 24th in Singapore.

Update: Artemy Lebedev has responded to our inquiry calling this a "funny (and unpleasant) coincidence." Art tells us that his design shop's Rozetkus 3D was first published in Lebedev's internal idea-collecting intranet dubbed, The Brain, back in November 2006. He assures us that his art is prior, had no knowledge of Damjan's work, and that no wrongdoing should be assumed by either party.

Read -- Letout Outlet
Read -- reddot list of winning concepts 2009 [Warning: Excel]

Filed under: Household

Art Lebedev's Rozetkus 3D vs. Letout Outlet... Fight! (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Giant gramophone plays the earth

2009-11-10T12:00:00Z

The Alunda Church Choir put their backs into this performance titled "Harvest" using the land-amplifying terrafon instrument. The piece, created by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke, is apparently part of an ongoing series (requiring some very sturdy and determined participants). Read more over at Create Digital Music.

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Google Offers Free Wi-Fi at Airports During the Holidays [Free Wi-Fi]

2009-11-10T12:30:00Z

Delayed flights and hold-overs won't tempt you with $10-a-day Wi-Fi this holiday season. That's because Google has bought out web service at 47 airports through Jan. 15, 2010, and offers it free, assuming you don't mind a little soft advertising.

As with Google's free Wi-Fi offering on Virgin America flights, those who log in through Google's Wi-Fi largess will likely get a few prompts to change their home page to Google or try out Google Chrome. There will also be chances to donate to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation, or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Other than that, it's free Wi-Fi for laptops and mobile devices, offered through providers like Boingo, Advanced Wireless, and the other usual suspects.

Hit the link to see if your city's on the list. If it's not, there's a good chance your Wi-Fi could be picked up by Microsoft's Bing search engine, which foots the bill if you perform one search on Bing.

Free WiFi - A 2009-2010 Holiday Gift from Google [via Gizmodo]

[Sponsored]

National Geographic Channel - Expedition Week

Search for the Amazon Headshrinkers
Sunday 9P e/p

They say that shrinking heads is no longer practiced. We’re going to ask the experts. Premieres Sunday at 9P e/p on Nat Geo. Learn more at
www.natgeotv.com/expeditionweek

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